I submit to you that if your distributed version control workflow has a single point of failure that can bring your work to a crashing halt, you haven’t grokked distributed version control.

I’ve been watching with some concern as more and more people have adopted git, not so much on technical merits, but on the simple fact that GitHub exists. Don’t get me wrong – GitHub is a terrific service which set a new bar in usability for managed source control hosting. But by focusing on GitHub, it seems like the focus has moved away from the distributed nature of git and right back to an SVN-style centralized model (albeit one with easier branching). Today’s wailing and gnashing of teeth reaction to GitHub downtime seems to confirm this trend.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that git makes hosting your own public repository “absurdly complicated”:http://weblog.masukomi.org/2008/03/11/sharing-a-public-git-repo-over-http-flow-chart compared to “other tools”:http://weblog.masukomi.org/2008/03/11/sharing-a-public-darcs-repo-over-http-flow-chart.

Whatever it is, I hope GitHub users take this opportunity to take a keener interest in the D in DVCS.